Aurora Rising: The Complete Collection (32 page)

With an eye roll she sent back a decline and excuse. The excuse was easy, as she legitimately wasn’t available on account of needing to get ready for the trip home. Whether he interpreted it as a more permanent decline…well, she would worry about that on her return.

Another one bites the dust. She laughed to herself, fully aware she had done it
again
, but opened a compose anyway.

Alex,

…or not. He’s entirely too needy, and on the verge of petulant. Oh well, tomorrow is another day.

— Kennedy

She sent the message as a gleam to her left caught her attention. The last moment of the sunset over the mountains tossed glittering beams into the snow-filled sky. It looked—

Message unable to be delivered. Recipient is not connected to exanet infrastructure. Message will be queued until it can be delivered.

What?

The person behind her collided into her, and she barely caught her balance in time to prevent a tumble to the ground. She mumbled a “sorry” and moved out of the way.

Distracted by troubling thoughts, she managed to wind through the busy pedestrian foot traffic to the low ledge marking the barrier between the sidewalk and a small sculpture park. She sank against the ledge.

There were a few instances when one might be cut off from the ubiquitous exanet infrastructure. Spelunking beneath a couple of kilometers of solid heavy metals, for instance, or catching a front-row seat to a supernova explosion. Not much else…other than being dead, of course.

The
Siyane
was equipped with the most robust radiation shielding available, but even it had limits.

Oh Alex, what
are
you doing?

24

SIYANE

M
ETIS
N
EBULA,
U
NCHARTED
P
LANET

T
HE
S
IYANE
SKIMMED FIFTEEN METERS
above the ground, cutting through a harsh wind toward the only reading for kilometers which showed any signs of being artificial.

Alex pointed at the screen taking up the uppermost-right quadrant of the cockpit display. She had given him view rights to the HUD, because it was simply practical to do so. “Keep an eye on this readout while I try not to crash into any sudden mountainous objects. Let me know when it spikes.”

Caleb nodded from his position leaning against the half-wall separating the cockpit and the main cabin. “Gotcha.”

They had spent the previous evening stretching the hull material as far as possible and called it an early, tired night. This morning they had set out in the direction of the region the navigation system identified as the likeliest crash site zone. They’d been flying for more than an hour to reach the edge of the region; for obvious reasons she flew conservatively.

He had baked muffins after they had lifted off, then showed up in the cockpit and casually handed her two.

Muffins. He had utterly confounded her with
muffins
. Banana nut multigrain muffins, to be precise. The man’s arsenal of weaponry was truly impressive.

She found her mind wandering to what other weapons he might have in his—
Jesus, Alex, get your mind out of the gutter. It’s far too early in the morning for those sorts of thoughts
.

“Hey, got a spike.”

She blinked hard and glanced at the display. “Yep.” She arced toward the flashing signal. When they were in range she slowed to a crawl until they could see the wreckage among the blowing sand.

He moaned and sagged against the wall in apparent despondence. “My baby….”

“Look, I said I was sorry. There’s nothing else—”

“She was a loaner. I’d had her all of a week.”

“Unh!” She leaned over and punched him in the shoulder. “Very funny.”

“Ow.” He rubbed his shoulder gingerly. “So what’s the plan?”

She studied the hazy outline of the wreckage. “It looks promising. The wind is nasty strong though, so we’ll tether ourselves to the hull. I say we take turns slicing off a piece and bringing it to the airlock. I’d like to end up with at least three square meters, as solid and flat as possible.” She leaned in closer to the viewport. “Given the state of the wreck, it may mean a lot of small pieces.”

“Works for me.”

The ship’s landing gear settled to the ground, and she cut the engine. “Let’s get to it.”

She rejoined him after depositing a sheet in the airlock, her fourth such trip. They had accumulated a nice stack of material by this point, but she didn’t want to come up short and have to do this all over again. The wind made every step a challenge, and the swirling dust reduced visibility to a few meters. “Goddamn this planet sucks.”

He chuckled over the vicinity comm. “You don’t have to tell me—I’m fairly certain I’ve been telling you. But that’s not even what bugs me the most about it.”

“And what does bug you the most about it?”

“How is it even here? What is it orbiting? We’re a
long
way from the pulsar, and there’s no indication of another star in the vicinity.”

“Perhaps the answer’s in that unusual radiation. I don’t know. Regardless—”

A powerful gust swept across them from out of nowhere; the crashed ship rocked precipitously, several loose sections tearing off to disappear into the sky.

The punishing wind ripped the piece of hull he had just severed out of his hand. Its jagged edges sliced right through the line tethering her to her ship on its way to oblivion.

The velocity of the wind increased yet more and began to push her relentlessly backward. She reached to grab onto the wreckage, and had succeeded in doing so when a fresh gust whipped in and her tenuous grip slipped on the metal surface.

His voice was low and steady. “Hang on. I’m going to—”

“I
can’t
!” The gust shifted direction, and she felt herself being blown sideways away from the wreck—

—his arms wound around her waist and gripped her against him. She didn’t understand how he managed to reach her. Somehow he had.

“It’s
okay
. I’ve got you.”

Her pulse raced, pounding in her ears above the howling wind. A wave of dizziness crashed over her with the rapid flood of adrenaline. She gasped in a breath. “Don’t let go.”

His faceplate dropped forward to rest on hers. “I won’t. I promise.”

Her eyes rose to meet his. She was shocked at how frightened he looked. Those beautiful irises had darkened to a raging midnight blue surrounding pinpoint pupils. Rigid lines of clenched muscles cut beneath his cheekbones.

But the tone of his voice remained calm and confident. It made her feel safe…as did the firm grasp of his arms around her. It seemed his deceptively lean build hid a great deal of strength. She sucked in several deep breaths until her pulse began to slow. “Thank you.”

He grinned, if a little shakily. “Couldn’t lose my pilot, now could I?”

“We should probably…head to the ship.”

“You want me to carry you?”

And the cocky wit returns. She glared at him through the faceplate, though any annoyance was contrived at best. “That’s quite all right. How about we just tie my line onto yours instead.”

“Okay, but don’t say I didn’t offer.”

“Noted.” She hoped the helmet hid the smile which insisted on pulling at her lips as she reached around him to secure the frayed end of her line to his. “Let’s each get a piece and head in. I think we have enough.” She jerked the knot tight and pulled back to face him.

A second passed, then two. Her pulse decided to reverse direction once more. She swallowed. “You can let go now.”

He laughed softly. “Right.” But he waited another full second before loosening his grip and taking a half-step away.

She spun toward the wreck, only to grumble in frustration. “And my blade’s gone.”

“S’ok. You can take…this one.” He finished cutting off a small piece and handed it to her, then went for the last one. Once he held the final slice in his hands, he paused to stare at the remnants of his ship.

“What is it? Is there something else you wanted to try to find?”

She saw his shoulders drop fractionally, though the sigh wasn’t audible. He looked back at her. “Nope. We’re good.”

She smiled to herself as the metal cooled to meld together into a nearly seamless sheet. The materials weren’t identical; as such, the hue underwent a noticeable shift at the…well, seam. Still, it would do. More than do, honestly. She had to admit, she was impressed by the Senecan-manufactured metamat. It wasn’t better than hers, merely different. But not bad different.

She began heating the next section. After laying out the recovered material and matching the pieces to the remaining gaps, they had divided up the repairs to save time. His work the previous afternoon had more than convinced her he knew what he was doing. She trusted him to get it right, which was saying a fair amount.

“So I was thinking. Once the repairs are finished, we should go check out those anomalous readings.”

His torch froze above the hull. “You think so?”

“We should consider it at least. At this point we’re practically there, we might as well drop by. I mean it’s why I’m here, it’s why you’re here. It won’t be much trouble to check it out.”

Her torch created a bright glare, and beyond its halo she couldn’t see his expression at the opposite end of the hold. She
could
see him set his tools on the floor. A reply was several seconds in coming, however.

“You’re right. It is why you’re here, and why I’m here. So what does that mean? If it turns out to be important, do I get a copy of the data?”

She didn’t even hesitate. After all, ‘I’ve been thinking’ meant she had previously identified the parameters and analyzed all the branching considerations. “Yes.”

His response was also quick, though she suspected for a different reason. “You mean it? Why?”

She returned to the still-ragged edge of the salvaged material. “Because I don’t gain anything by keeping it from you. You’ll know what the phenomenon is, at least in general terms, because you’ll be there. I suspect unlike my typical clients, your bosses won’t demand detailed scientific analyses and spectrum charts before acting on the information, so you’ll already have everything you need. I won’t gain any advantage by being a bitch and I’ll lose….” Her hand paused two centimeters from the shard.

“You’ll lose what?”

Asshole, as if he didn’t know the answer. “Comity.”

He choked back a laugh. “
Comity?
”

She scowled at the torch. “Yes,
comity
. Goodwill. Friendly relations. You not trying to kill me. Call it whatever—” She yelped as the flame grazed her fingertip, and quickly extinguished it lest she set the ship on fire.

“Alex, you have to know by now I’m
not
going to kill you.”

She sucked on the scalded finger to buy a second or two. “Of course I do. I was trying to be humorous. Failing miserably apparently. Not a huge surprise, it was never one of my strong suits.” He didn’t comment further, and she flicked the torch back on and turned to the hull—

—then realized he had come over and crouched on the balls of his feet against the wall beside her. Damn he could move quietly.

She eyed him without actually looking at him; a corner of his mouth tweaked up in response. He was entirely too cute for his—or her—own good when he did that…. Surprised at her own reaction, she wondered when precisely it was his smirk had stopped being annoying and started being cute. The evening before? This morning with the muffins? Just now?

“I don’t believe you.”

She blew out a breath, flicked the torch off
again
and rolled onto her back. “You understand why, don’t you?”

He nodded. “Because it’s my job to be a chameleon, to become whatever I need to be in a given situation in order to complete the mission—or at least get out alive, as the case may be. And I’m very good at my job, which I imagine you have surmised. Therefore, you have no way to be certain whether or not I’m simply acting the part of the easygoing, agreeable, helpful, funny, charming stowaway and will slit your throat the minute it benefits me to do so.”